The ultimate enemy of ISISThe president’s request for the authorization to use military force against the Islamic State has landed in a Congress as divided as the country. That division was mirrored in the disparate receptions Obama’s resolution received from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. To the Times, Obama’s AUMF is “alarmingly broad. It does not limit the battlefield to Syria and Iraq.” This would give the White House “virtually unrestricted power ...

The importance of perceptionCONWAY — You probably have heard the saying, “What is one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Boy, have I got a story to tell you today that points up just how true this is. The bottom line of what I am saying is that “PERCEPTION” is very important. It is often how we perceive a person, a performance or an event that determines the value we place on them. Here is an example that illustrates what I am saying: “In Washington, D.C., at a Metr...

Heart-shaped loveIn grammar school, Valentine’s Day meant wrapping a shoe box with brown craft paper, cutting a slot in the top for cards to drop in and decorating the outside of the box with hearts and cupids. Store-bought Valentines were labeled the night before and carefully taken to school to be given away. When the big day came, it wasn’t only if you received Valentines that counted, it was from whom, and if they gave you your card first that mattered. Be...

What makes Rand Paul strangeSen. Rand Paul believes that vaccinating children should be up to the parents, an increasingly unpopular view after recent outbreaks of measles, mumps and other diseases. And throwing a newt’s eye of quack science into the vat, the Kentucky Republican promotes the myth that these shots put children at risk. The political results have been toil and trouble. It’s not easy being a politician and a principled libertarian. One who believes in the p...

Measles, vaccines and autismThe current controversy over whether parents should be forced to have their children vaccinated for measles is one of the painful signs of our times. Measles was virtually wiped out in the United States, years ago. Why the resurgence of this disease now? The short answer is that false claims, based on other false claims, led many parents to stop getting their children vaccinated against measles. The key false claim was that the vaccine for mea...

Governor, enjoy this while it lastsWe are witnessing the smoothest legislative session in recent memory, thanks to its placement on history’s timeline and the political skills of the state’s leadership, particularly Gov. Asa Hutchinson. He should enjoy this while it lasts. I say it’s the smoothest because of what it could have been. Going into the session, the debate over the private option threatened to dominate the session. The program, which uses federal Medicaid dollars to ...

Citizens Commission's impactWhat really did we expect when we passed Issue No. 3 in the November general election? Now that it’s being implemented as Amendment 94 to the Arkansas Constitution, some suggest that we the people didn’t know what we were doing. Granted, Issue No. 3 was complicated. The full bill, referred to us by the Legislature as House Joint Resolution 1009, was 22 pages and more than 7,500 words in length, some of which deleted previous laws. So naturally...

Hyphenated-nationAs if we aren’t already divided enough by race, class, gender, political party, economic status and sexual orientation, the federal government is reportedly thinking about creating a new category of Americans just in time for the next census. According to the Associated Press, “The U.S. Census Bureau will test the new Middle East-North Africa classification for possible inclusion on the 2020 census if it gets positive feedback about the propos...

The race is on (Feb. 8, 2015)Editor’s note: Will Berry is a member of the board of directors for the RussVegas Half Marathon and Relay. He will write a column about various topics relating to the half-marathon in the weeks leading up to the April 10-11 event. This week he did a Q & A with two of the winners from last year’s event. Carson Miller, 19, of Dover was the 2014 RussVegas Overall Winner with a time of 1:18:52. How long have you been running? I ran my first race w...

Larger fights may loom in sessionLITTLE ROCK — Arkansas lawmakers made quick work of the two biggest issues facing them this year: approving a $102 million tax cut and keeping the state’s compromise Medicaid expansion alive another year. That doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing for the remainder of a legislative session. Questions about the state’s lottery, prison overcrowding and a potential push for additional tax cuts could complicate the legislative leaders’ efforts for a re...

Computer science picks up speedLITTLE ROCK — Last week was our third full week into the legislative session. Our legislators have worked extremely hard and accomplished key milestones in our effort to create more jobs in Arkansas. Our plan to offer computer science classes in every high school in Arkansas passed the House and is now on to the state Senate. This is exciting news for Arkansas’s students and for the future of our state. Over the next decade, it’s estimated tha...

Several issues still before usLITTLE ROCK — In less than a month’s time, this General Assembly has tackled tax cuts, health care, and made significant advancements in education. On Friday, Governor Hutchinson signed a bill to lower income tax in our state by 1 percent. This will amount to a savings of around $300 a year for a family making $50,000. It directly affects 600,000 taxpayers making between $21,000 and $75,000 a year. The other big development this week came when...

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State House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

The race is on (Feb. 1, 2015)Editor’s note: Will Berry is one of the board of directors for the RussVegas Half Marathon and Relay. He will write a column about various topics relating to the half-marathon in the weeks leading up to the April 10-11 event. Why run? Could you imagine paying your hard earned money to endure the physical and mental challenge of training for and finishing a half-marathon, marathon or an even greater distance? There was a time when parents and t...

News flash: This could save a lifeCONWAY — Much to the chagrin of the U.S. Postal Service, there is a better, faster and cheaper way to get information to a large number of people at the same time. It is called email, and I use it all the time. Many of my readers also use it to email information to me and, while I can’t use all of it, occasionally I get something so good that I feel compelled to pass it along. What I received from a man by the name of Jim Duran is a fourth ind...

Stormy weather and politicsIt was refreshing to see meteorologists apologize for their dire — and wrong — predictions of an unprecedented snow storm that they had said would devastate the northeast. It was a big storm, but the northeast has seen lots of big snow storms before and will probably see lots of big snow storms again. That’s called winter. Unfortunately, we are not likely to hear any similar apologies from those who have been promoting “global warming” hysteri...

The faith factor (2016 edition)We are one year away from the Iowa caucuses and already several Republican presidential candidates are trying to secure an advantage by talking about their faith. Before announcing his non-candidacy last Friday, Mitt Romney had indicated if he ran for a third time he intended to be more “open” about his Mormon faith. Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, regularly invokes his Baptist faith. And now Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wiscons...

The power of personalityThis week marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister during World War II. Churchill took up painting as a hobby in 1915, after the Gallipoli debacle, where 46,000 allied lives were lost over nine months of the campaign. He went on to paint more than 500 paintings during his lifetime. As wartime prime minister, he took a break from painting, focusing instead on the task at hand — winning the war, ...

Obama versus AmericaIn his recent trip to India, President Obama repeated a long-standing pattern of his — denigrating the United States to foreign audiences. He said he had been discriminated against because of his skin color in America, a country in which there is, even now, “terrible poverty.” Make no mistake about it, there is no society of human beings in which there are no rotten people. But for a President of the United States to be smearing America in a f...

Voters should select, not elect, judgesThe recent admission of bribery by former circuit judge Michael Maggio is an example of why Arkansas should consider changing the way it fills judicial offices — still relying on average citizens, but not by using elections. Maggio pleaded guilty Jan. 9 to a felony bribery charge and now probably is on his way to prison. He had reduced a jury verdict against a nursing home operator from $5.2 million to $1 million two days after receiving large...

Awful executive sessions billFrom what originally appeared to be an honorable attempt to improve the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, state Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, is now pushing a bill that would strike at the very foundation of the state’s model access law. Bell is sponsoring House Bill 1054, titled “An Act to Preserve the Integrity of Executive Sessions ...” If that’s what it would actually do, he would have strong support from Arkansas news organizations, which re...